| Giving the market primacy over the common good has serious consequences |
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To say that we live in extraordinary times would be an understatement. A period of economic boom has crashed. It is now clear that much of the economic growth of the past decade and more was powered, in part at least, by a deeply dishonest global financial system. For quite some time this system had been used by a relatively small number of people to become very rich. Much of what happened can only be described as fraud.
Financial institutions in Ireland played their own part in this process. Some of their actions were fraudulent. But it went far beyond that. For example they provided 100% mortgages at low interest rates to people who were borrowing beyond their means. This availability of credit led to house prices being hugely inflated. Twice as many houses as were required were being built each year. Once the international banking system started to implode and the world moved towards recession Ireland was very badly placed to address the emerging crisis. Ireland was then hit by a second ‘tsunami’. Our tax system was over-dependent on stamp duty, VAT and related ‘transaction’ taxes. When these transactions declined with the emerging recession the total tax-take fell dramatically. Ireland found itself with a banking crisis and a Government fiscal crisis. For more than a decade CORI Justice had been pointing to the danger of relying on the building boom for tax income. However, we did not have much impact on Government policy on this issue. Now we find ourselves in the strange situation of hearing our proposals being put forward by many of the same economists and media commentators who had been berating us for more than a decade for holding these views. There are many roots to the current economic crisis. We have previously provided an analysis of how this crisis has been developing for thirty years. But there is more to it, much more. The moral dimension There are deeper moral dimensions to this crisis that require attention. Much of the current crisis is rooted in a philosophy of individualism that resists communitarian connectedness and sees the individual as the primary unit of social reality. This philosophical approach sees the person principally in economic terms and considers the market to be the key place for advancement and development. Such a view of the person leads to endless struggle in the rat race of achievement which in turn produces endless anxiety, about the market and about oneself. The individual constantly feels threatened, insecure, in danger. The standard response is to gather more, to have more, so as to be in control of both the present and the future. The contrast with the Gospel and with the Catholic Social Thought (CST) tradition is striking. A recent book on CST is entitled Rediscovering Abundance. It analyses wealth and income and concludes that there is an abundance of resources but that the distribution of these resources is problematic. This analysis is not new. St Basil, a fourth century theologian and monastic wrote: “If one had taken what is necessary to cover one’s needs and had left the rest to those who are in need, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, no one would be in need.” While much of economics starts with a focus on scarcity, biblical faith is rooted in the generosity of God’s abundance and in recognising the need to share with brothers and sisters across the world. An alternative to the present dominant view of the world and how it should function is required. We need to move from a world that is built on individualism, anxiety and greed to a world that is built on the reality of abundance, the need for generosity, the dignity of the person and the centrality of the common good. |